In this episode, I’ll answer a question from the Pottsboro Area Library. They are replacing an outdoor promotional banner and wanted some advice about the best things to promote in that very specific space.
Kudos go to the Thayer Public Library. Watch the video to find out why they’ve earned this week’s kudos.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
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As you well know, libraries have changed, evolved, and adapted in some remarkable ways, particularly in the past 19 months.
But past perception continues to be a real hurdle for libraries. Plenty of people who would call themselves a fan of the library don’t know all the things the modern library does.
We must make sure our community understands who we are right now. And there is a movement to do that through storytelling.
One of those storytellers is Evelyn Shapiro, Promotions Manager at Champaign Public Library in Illinois. As I was preparing to speak at Content Marketing World, I reached out to Evelyn to ask for details about her content marketing campaign, A Library for Life.
Evelyn graciously shared the story of how she compiled this amazing YouTube playlist of patrons who shared the relevance and importance of the Champaign Library’s work. And she’s permitted me to share what she wrote with you.
I hope you will find inspiration in her words. But also, I hope you will see how practical and, frankly, easy it is to gather and tell stories about the ways your library is changing lives.
“Libraries are one of the best ideas humans have ever had.”
Danielle Borasky, Vice-President, NoveList
“Friends and colleagues have told me that connecting with amazing people is one of my superpowers. It’s funny because I can’t help thinking—doesn’t everyone feel like they know truly remarkable people?”
“So, part of the genesis of the project came through the #LibraryLove shared by Karin Markovitch, the parent I interviewed. She had been sharing the most fantastic comments and stories with us in social media posts, tagging the library, also in person with the desk staff. She is just a natural library ambassador, brimming with appreciation.”
“I kept thinking about how I wanted to share her enthusiasm and appreciation of what we offer with the world, but especially with local community members who might not know about or use the library, and with staff because we never tire of hearing that our efforts and expertise result in a positive experience and impact for customers.”
“Our Teen Librarian Kathie Kading was keen on introducing me to Mallory Morris, the educator I interviewed. Mallory’s energy is pure magic, and she can speak with authority about the impact the library has on teachers’ and students’ lives. Interviewing her would mean other people would get to hear her stories, in her words. She was able to put together our group of teen interviewees, drawing from students at her school (across the street from the library) which turned out to be powerful testimony as well.”
“Also, a colleague in the children’s department introduced me to an area artist, Stacey Robinson, who was using the study room next to the children’s desk as his studio, coming in regularly and drawing illustrations for a graphic novel he was creating. She had gotten to know him over time and wanted to be sure I knew his story. (He ended up surprising her by thanking her by name in the acknowledgments of his book!)”
“I connected with him, and it turns out we know people in common in town in the art/design/theatre/dance/music worlds. Again, he was passionate about the library and spoke so well about what a treasure this place is. I wanted to be able to share his story. He also teaches on the University of Illinois campus in the Art + Design department and is a lot of fun to follow on social media.”
“So, momentum had started building and because it was our tenth anniversary in this building, I realized I could propose the project as interviews with ten community members. It was our first video project and not part of my original budget that year, but it was the right timing to ask.”
“Once approved, I needed to build my list of who I would bring on camera. I knew about some of the range I wanted and topics I wanted to highlight including a parent and teen, a Board member, and someone who could speak about the Branch. Our director was able to recommend three of those featured—Candace, Thom, and Rajiv.”
“While working on developing our strategic plan, we invited a group of community members (around 50) to a retreat here to talk about the library and community needs. In one session I attended, Charlisa spoke up about the Douglass Branch, what libraries meant to her as a child, and how children access literacy in our community. I was so compelled by what she had to say. Charlisa has become a very active participant on our social streams as well.”
“Around this time, I’d met a new-to-the-community social media manager named Huan who worked remotely with an international org in communications and marketing. It turned out she spent a lot of time in our new walk-in co-working space for area entrepreneurs. She used it as her office and was getting involved with supporting the library in a few different ways—through a United Way young professionals project and through serving on the Library Friends Board. We met by chance in the FriendShop Bookstore. At the time, she was volunteering in the shop, and we had a chance to chat. She had an international perspective, having lived, and worked in co-working spaces in London. She could compare what we offered here with co-working amenities in a Big City.”
“I already knew Amanda personally and at this time she was heading up the local Project READ initiative and both our locations were public sites where their group offered tutoring. I love talking with her about making good things happen in our community. She had held the role of liaison for families as part of a school program our daughter participated in. I had seen how fluidly she moved in different worlds and languages and what an effective advocate she is. She turned out to be an ideal example of how the library partners with community groups and how our services help immigrants.”
“I learned to bring a stash of tissues with me each time because someone always started crying. The stories were so heartful. I’ve also thought about additional ways we could share these stories, including in print somehow. I haven’t even transcribed them yet or pulled quotes from them. There may be obvious ways to expand and reuse their stories. The key seems to be selecting people who could talk glowingly about the library, without a lot of prompting from me.”
“As communicators, we focus a lot on our messages, as we need to. However, I see our role as much as a listener—how else can we share great comments and stories?”
Evelyn Shapiro is Promotions Manager at Champaign Public Library in Illinois. Before that, she worked in graphic design and has more than 75 published books and CDs to her credit, along with numerous awards from Parents’ Choice, University College and Designers Association, and the Chicago Book Clinic.
Is your library telling stories about your work and your patrons? I’d love to see and share those stories! Send me an email with more information.
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In this episode, in light of last week’s Facebook and Instagram outage, we’ll look at the term “rented land.” And I’ll give you some alternatives to putting library marketing content on “land” that your library owns. 🙂
Kudos go to Sayville Public Library. Watch the video to see why they’re being highlighted.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments.
And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
In this episode, I’ll dive deeper into one of the big takeaways for libraries from Content Marketing World 2021. This is a concept that marketing expert Jay Baer explained during his keynote and for me, it was the most relevant takeaway for libraries from this year’s conference.
We’ll also share kudos for an amazing library promotional video. Watch the video to see which library we’re highlighting this week.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
Last week, I felt like a groundhog venturing out of its hole after a long winter of hibernation. But groundhogs only hibernate for five months, and I’ve been in lockdown for 19 months.
I went to Content Marketing World, a global marketing conference run by the Content Marketing Institute. You’ve heard me talk about it (a lot!) here on the blog before. It’s the conference where I get the most inspiration. I come away with pages and pages of practical tips. And this year was no exception.
I listened to the top experts talk about the ways the pandemic has changed consumer behavior in email, social media, and engagement with brands. I will be bringing you more of those insights, and what they mean for libraries, in the coming weeks.
But I’m eager to share the top seven takeaways with you right now. These big ideas will impact the promotions you do for your library in the coming year.
Jill says you may hear from many experts that you need to be measuring certain key data points. And there are many things you can learn from data.
But, your library should focus on tracking and measuring the data points that will show you if you are meeting your strategic goals. And Jill gives you permission to ignore the rest.
Lesson #2: Email is a community builder.
Dennis Shiao, Founder of Attention Retention LLC, and Ashley Guttuso, Director of Marketing for Simple Focus Software.
According to Ashley and Dennis, the purpose of a newsletter is not to promote your events and services. It is to build trust between your library and your community.
I’ll be translating more of their tips in the coming weeks. But for now, here’s a challenge from Ashley and Dennis: Create a newsletter that’s habit-forming, one that your audience gets excited to read whenever you send it.
The first step to doing that is to make your email newsletters opt-in. Ashley and Dennis have data to prove opt-in newsletters are more effective because readers are intentionally choosing to receive your information.
Lesson #3: We have to stop forcing our content on people. Instead, we must work to be invited into their lives.
Jay is an amazing author and speaker, and his keynote gave me a lot to think about.
He used the analogy of a castle and a moat to explain why people might be ignoring your promotions. Here’s how it works.
Our audience lives in a castle. Marketers are always trying to take over the castle by putting out lots and lots of promotions.
But the audience has built a moat around their castle to protect themselves from the onslaught of content. The moat is when your community unsubscribes or deletes your emails, or bounces out of your virtual programs, videos, or website after only a few seconds.
In history, armies tried to get around a moat by building a tall ladder and forcing their way into the castle. Anyone who has watched any historical drama knows this never works. The ladder gets pushed off the castle, and the soldiers never make it inside.
Instead, Jay challenged the audience to “get moativated” and get invited inside the castle by being radically relevant. He pointed out that the word “custom” is inside the word “customer.” People want content that is custom-tailored to them!
I’ll dive deeper into this idea and what it means for libraries in this Wednesday’s episode of The Library Marketing Show.
Lesson #4: Make sure your library is active on social media if you plan to do a PR push.
Michelle says journalists look at your library’s social media, especially Twitter, when they consider covering your library. So, if you are planning to do a major press push, you want to be active on social media before you send out your press release.
Many libraries have scaled down their posts on certain social media platforms because of a lack of engagement. I still believe that’s a good strategy, especially if your library lacks time and resources.
But, if you are planning something big and you’d like media coverage, Michelle says it’s in your library’s best interest to start posting on those platforms again a few weeks before you contact the media. It will increase your chances of getting covered.
Lesson #5: You can’t be remarkable on more than one social media channel at a time.
You may think this piece of advice runs contradictory to lesson #4. But when your library posts on social media with information about an upcoming event or service ahead of a PR push, you’ll be fulfilling a relevant but short-term objective.
Your library’s long-term objective with social media is to build audience engagement and drive people back to your website or catalog. To do that, you must be truly memorable with your social media posts. And to be truly memorable, you need to focus your efforts on one channel, preferably the place where most of your community is engaging.
Start thinking about which social media channel you would use for your library posts if you could only pick one channel. Then, create content that is relevant and remarkable in that channel.
Andrew said the pandemic was a once-in-a-generation marketing experiment that answered the question: What happens when every business in the world is faced with the same disruptive forces?
Then he told the amazing story of a sustainable farm that made an incredible pivot during the first days of the pandemic. They ended up making a huge profit, more than they had projected to make before the pandemic.
And all I could think about was the work of libraries in the pandemic. The services you created and unveiled to the public in a matter of days, including curbside pickup, book bundles, phone reference, take and make craft kits, virtual author events, and so much more, were born out of constraints.
YOU proved Andrew’s point.
I want you to recognize the awesomeness of what you did when you were constrained. Now, think about how constraints on your time and budget may lead to new creative ideas in the future.
Lesson #7: Purpose-driven marketing makes people follow, engage, and get behind your brand.
Jacquie Chakirelis, Director of Digital Strategy, Quest Digital Great Lakes Publishing
Jacquie’s talk made me realize that libraries need to highlight our doing purpose-driven work. She points out that consumers know that they have a voice. And that they are using that voice more frequently to make statements in their decisions to engage with brands who have a purpose.
Our mission statement differentiates libraries from our for-profit competitors. This is the core reason why library patrons feel loyal to your library.
Jacquie encourages you to find stories of how your library has taken a stand on issues in your community. Those stories will activate your community to become loyal fans of your library.
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In this episode, I’ve got three big updates for libraries that will affect your ability to post to social media.
Kudos go to the University of North Carolina Libraries for their free racial equity challenge syllabus.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
In this episode, we’ll talk through some tips for coming up with a name for your library program or event that will help you with promotion. Yes, this has marketing and promotional benefits! I’ll explain.
Kudos go to the Chesapeake Public Library for telling patron stories on Facebook for Library Card Signup Month.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments.
And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week. Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, enter your email address and click on the “Follow” button in the lower left-hand corner of the page.
This video is for anyone who works in a library with a long holds list and frustrated readers. I’ll share some ideas for keeping people engaged with your collection even as they wait for that one book they are dying to read.
Kudos in this episode go to Indian Trails Public Library for this cute Library Card Signup month video, created by staff member Stephanie Diebel.
Do you have a suggestion for a topic for a future episode? Want to nominate someone for kudos? Let me know in the comments. And subscribe to this series to get a new video tip for libraries each week.
Thanks for watching!
Subscribe to this blog and you’ll receive an email every time I post. To do that, click on the “Follow” button in the bottom left-hand corner of the page.
This week, I learned a new term used to describe the way the world is transforming in the wake of the pandemic.
“The Next Normal” was coined by workplace consulting firm McKinsey & Company. It describes the changes which continue to emerge in every industry in the post-viral era.
A return to normal after an event like the pandemic is extremely challenging. It calls for libraries to reimagine and reform the work they do to meet their community’s needs in new ways.
Libraries seem to have the most angst about this change with regards to programming.
I have talked with many library staff members who truly enjoy creating and presenting programs. The process brings them fulfillment and purpose. And the idea that the pandemic may have permanently changed the way the public engages with library programming makes them sad and nervous.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately.
Change is scary and uncomfortable. But it also gives us an opportunity to approach library programs in a way that is more strategic. We have the chance to make sure our programming is creating deep relationships with our community.
Here are eight things to keep in mind as you begin to re-create your library programs in the age of The Next Normal.
Be realistic about the hurdles
Before the pandemic, libraries got a lot of program and event traffic from people who walked in to check out a book or browse the collection. They noticed an event or program happening in the library and joined in.
Because of the pandemic, libraries have implemented convenience services, like curbside pickup and book bundles. The community needs those services. But they also impact the number of physical visits to your library and in turn, the number of people who come across a program impulsively.
There is also a significant portion of the community who is not comfortable (yet) with going back to a public indoor space. Others discovered virtual programming during the lockdown and now prefer it.
We must acknowledge that the pandemic may have changed the way people interact with library programming. When you give yourself and your library permission to accept that premise, you can begin to rebuild and reimagine the way your library creates and promotes programs.
Plan fewer, but more quality programs
The Next Normal is a great time for libraries to re-evaluate the programs they offer.
I propose that libraries reduce the number of programs that they do. Instead, spend more money and more time planning quality programs that are unique to your community.
Set your promotional boundaries and stick to them
Library marketers are often expected to promote every program at a library, months in advance. The Next Normal is a great time to set down some ground rules for which programs get promoted and how those promotions will be carried out.
As you are determining the boundaries that will work best for your library, you may have to experiment with how far in advance you promote programs and on what channels.
Remember that your community’s schedule and expectations have changed in the wake of the pandemic. The promotions you did before the pandemic may not work in The Next Normal.
Track the results of your promotions so you can identify those changes and create new ground rules for your promotional work. Once you set those rules, stick to them.
You may be pressured to make exceptions. And there may be co-workers who don’t appreciate the effort you are making to do the best job of marketing for your library. That’s okay.
If you create a plan that puts the interest of your community and your library at its core, you will be successful.
Make promotions part of your program planning
As you begin to put your program together, make it a habit to think about the marketing piece. Ask yourself:
Who will be your target audience?
What is the best way to reach them?
How much time will it take you (or your co-workers who help with marketing) to create the pieces you’ll need to promote your event properly?
What will your event hashtag be?
If there are other library staff who will be involved in promotions, make sure you give them a heads up in plenty of time. For example, if your library has a social media manager, try meeting with them once a month to let them know about the programs you’re putting together.
Choose your promotional platforms carefully.
Community members may ignore promotions because they are overwhelmed by the sheer number of marketing messages they receive. Libraries tend to want to promote everything on all channels. Let’s be more intentional.
If your community actively engages with your Facebook posts, use that to your advantage. Create events on Facebook for your programs so that potential attendees get a reminder as the day of your program draws near. You can also buy Facebook ads or boost your posts to target specific demographics, even if you have a small budget.
If your community prefers interaction on another social media platform, like Instagram, spend your time and energy promoting your events there. Instagram Stories are a great way to build excitement.
Perhaps your library has a receptive and engaged email list. Add a program suggestion to your reading recommendation emails. Or send an email with a program announcement to a targeted audience.
Leverage your presenters
The Next Normal is the time to get as much promotion out of your speakers, presenters, and sponsors as possible. They likely have a ready-made audience that may like to attend your event. Ideally, this kind of collaborative promotion should be a part of your agreement with each participant.
You can make it easy on presenters by sending them a pre-written social media post or blurb for their email newsletter promoting their appearance. Supply them with copy, images, video, print assets, and anything else they need to help you spread the word.
Create some FOMO (fear of missing out)
FOMO is a powerful tool for getting more attendance at your programs. Your registered patrons and past program attendees can provide social proof that your event is going to be amazing. Let them help you build hype.
About a week before the event, send an email reminder or a social media message to everyone who has registered or shown interest in your program. Encourage them to brag that they’ll be attending. Include a pre-written social media message to make it easy to share.
Remember your real goal
At the end of the day, programs should help your library create a relationship with those cardholders. We want them to come to us for all their problems, and all their questions, and all their needs.
This is a more holistic approach than merely counting attendance numbers. Creating that engaged community will make your work worth all the effort.
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